Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited Philly to check-in on MLK Jr. Drive’s $20M bridge rehab

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg visited Philadelphia on Tuesday as the White House looks to highlight federal infrastructure spending under President Joe Biden ahead of November’s election.

Buttigieg went to the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive Bridge to observe the progress on its rehabilitation, which is fully funded by $20 million from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The bridge connects Martin Luther King Jr. Drive on the western bank of the Schuylkill to Eakins Oval, near the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The secretary previously visited the steel girder bridge in January 2022 to announce $1.6 billion of funding from the new law for replacing and repairing bridges in Pennsylvania across five years, a number that has since increased to $1.8 billion.

“Two years ago, we were here to roll out the Bridge Formula Program, and what’s so exciting is now we’re here seeing construction underway — workers getting good paying jobs, bringing their skills to support the project, and seeing that project move toward completion, which is exactly why we worked so hard under President Biden’s leadership to get this infrastructure package out in the first place,” Buttigieg said.

The secretary’s visit comes just four days after Biden spoke in Delaware County, a sign of Philadelphia region’s strategic importance in the election. Infrastructure has been Biden’s signature policy and will be a key part of his reelection pitch, which makes Buttigieg an important messenger.

After a windy tour of the bridge Tuesday, Buttigieg met workers on the site while sporting sunglasses and a Department of Transportation zip-up.

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The project is slated to be finished in summer 2025, but construction is ahead of schedule, making a spring 2025 completion a possibility, said Bill Gural, the chief construction engineer from the Philadelphia Department of Streets who briefed Buttigieg on the status of the project.

The bridge, which was built in 1966, closed down to vehicular traffic due to its poor condition in 2021. The city allowed pedestrians and cyclists to exclusively use the bridge, but that access ended in February 2023 so the rehab could begin — leaving some to lament the project with the loss of the recreation space.

While it was still open to traffic, the bridge previously had a five-foot sidewalk for pedestrians. The new configuration will slightly widen the bridge to allow for a 10-by-six-foot protected pedestrian and cycling path to go alongside three lanes of traffic.

Workers are currently repairing rusted steel supports during the day and demolishing the existing concrete by night, Gural said.

While the massive federal effort is addressing the most urgent bridge repairs, Buttigieg said, it won’t fix every bridge that needs fixing, with a backlog that has grown over decades.

“But the good news is we’re changing the trajectory,” he said. “It’s gone from getting worse every year to getting better every year. And our goal, of course, will be to continue to accelerate that so that every part of America has the infrastructure we need to really win the 21st century.”